China will bring Hollywood to ruin by 2035

China has taught the world a lesson on how to handle Hollywood consumer goods. All the major Marvel Entertainment blockbusters released in 2021 never made it to theatres in China. Instead, Beijing promotes its films in the domestic market, aiming to become the leading cinematic power on the planet by 2035.

Four fantastic action films about superheroes, which opened the so-called "fourth phase" of the Marvel universe - "Spider-Man: No Way Home", "Black Widow", "The Eternals" and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” - became mega-hits around the world, collecting a total of $2.9 billion. But not in the Chinese market.

There is no need to talk about the artistic merits of “cinematic work” from the Walt Disney Studios division. There is a trite plot, cardboard characters, well-worn political correctness and the indispensable "victory of democracy over the tyranny of villains". And yet, the audience falls for these films: they offer them not just a spectacle, but also a "rest from all worries" with family or friends under popcorn and Cola.

However, the Chinese authorities decided not to indulge what is still rolling in Russia. In a situation where the coronavirus has put on pause filming around the world, Beijing has made a bet on its own products.

As a result, the highest-grossing film in China in 2021 (and in the country's history) was the patriotic film "Battle of Chosin Reservoir" about the Korean War of 1950-1953, which collected $900 million with a budget of $200 million. And this year in the Middle Kingdom, the film "Embrace Again" is leading - about the outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, presented in the correct interpretation, from the point of view of Beijing.

So the Chinese Communist Party kills three birds with one stone. It protects its citizens from the American film bubble, allows its own producers to earn money, and most importantly, gradually takes over Hollywood's status as the main soft power on the planet.

“Yellow threat”

On November 8, 2021, the American entertainment website Variety pleased readers with news: judging by the poster in Chinese, the latest film about Spider-Man will still be released on Chinese screens! But then it reminded that with another Marvel project, the movie "Eternals", things are much worse. They say that the Beijing censors still cannot forgive its director, an American of Chinese origin, Chloé Zhao, for a rash statement eight years ago.

The funny thing is that Ms. Zhao's comment was never published in Variety. It's even funnier that her scandalous words were shamefully erased from an interview with Filmmaker a year ago. The things one will do for the sake of Chinese box office! But the Internet remembers everything: in 2013, the devil pushed Chloé into blurting out that "lies reign everywhere in China”.

And this was enough for a multi-year ban! Zhao was not saved by the subsequent change of shoes, nor the Oscar for the film "Nomadland" about American homeless people, nor the Chinese woman in the lead role in "Eternals".

The appearance of the first gay superhero in this blockbuster movie probably also played a role. On the screen, the immortal inventor of weapons, Phastos, lives in a happy marriage with her earthly husband Ben, and even raises their son Jack. Such blatant gay propaganda in the Middle Kingdom was clearly not welcome, especially after the famous criticism of the Chinese leadership against effeminate performers, who in China are called "girly guns" (娘炮, niang pao).

In the same news from Variety, another Marvel film is mentioned - "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings". It also missed hundreds of millions of dollars due to the lack of access to the box office of the Middle Kingdom. What could go wrong with the story of a kung fu master performed by another expat, Canadian Simu Liu?

Maybe similar nonsense from the mouth of Liu, who in 2017 called China a “third world” country where people are “dying of starvation"? Or the fact that in the story Master Shang's current name is Shaun, and he works as a parking attendant in San Francisco? Or maybe the fact that the figure of his father, the negative character Xu Wenwu, refers to the stereotypical image of the Chinese supervillain Fu Manchu, analogous to Professor Moriarty or Fantômas? This personification of the “yellow threat” in Anglo-Saxon literature of the 20th century has directly migrated to the Marvel universe - to the obvious displeasure of Beijing.

Propaganda films about Russians

But most likely, the main reason for the disfavour for Marvel lies in the general feeling of spreading propaganda films and endless cliches about China performed by Western film makers. Something similar is experienced by a normal Russian viewer from watching Hollywood crafts about Russia - with the indispensable vodka, matryoshka, bear and icy Siberia.

Previously, Beijing, under the threat of a boycott of actors and entire film studios, forced Americans to engage in self-censorship: from banning any hint of "independence" of Tibet to removing the overly stupid dragon Mushu from the movie "Mulan". And now it bans them without hesitation.

By the way, about propaganda productions about Russians. You can only watch the third of the Marvel superhero movies of 2021, "Black Widow”, with the help of developed-over-the-years immunity to branded Hollywood nonsense. It talks about "KGB", which trains sterilised (!) female students to become super spies under the cover of the Russian ballet school (!!).

The main character of the film, a former KGB assassin, is named Natasha Romanoff with the patronymic Alianovna, and the names of other Russian characters are Vostokoff, Dreykov (both women) and Shostakov. On this, in principle, you can stop, wondering how the "Black Widow" even got a box office certificate in Russia.

Of course, we are unlikely to get a response from the Ministry of Culture. But we can easily imagine how the Chinese feel when they shoot all the dross about them in Hollywood.

Very big money

But what about Spider Man? Despite his superpowers and the assurances of Variety, he also could not squeeze into the Chinese market. Not having any special anti-Chinese messages, the last film about him, as they say, just fell under the distribution. Obviously, the censors of Beijing considered that in the year of the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, and even in the conditions of a trade and diplomatic war with Washington, there is no reason to give Marvel and Disney hundreds of millions of dollars of box office money and once again promote their paper heroes.

Money is largely at the forefront here. Or rather, a lot of money.

China, with its 1.5 billion viewers, is the fastest-growing and most expensive film market in the world. Recovering from the pandemic, China accounted for more than a third (34%) of the $21.4 billion global box office receipts in 2021 - $ 7.4 billion. The year before last, the Chinese share did not exceed 28%. For the first half of this January, Chinese viewers managed to leave $370 million at the box office. For comparison, in the United States and Canada over the same days, film companies earned only $330 million at the box office.

Of course, Beijing is not at all eager to lose such money and is gradually ousting American film giants from its market. And again, there are revealing statistics: in 2021, the share of imported pictures in China was only 15%. Among them, only 39% of the films were American - compared to 47% three years earlier.

Is it necessary to add that the undisputed leaders in the Chinese box office were their own films? So, last year there were only three Chinese films, "The Battle of Chosin Reservoir", "Hi, Mom" and "Detective Chinatown 3" collected more than $2.4 billion in China - this is 34% of all the money raised in China from the sale of 1.167 billion tickets.

There were only three American films in the top twenty - Fast and Furious 9, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Free Guy. Everything else is Chinese comedies, family dramas, and action movies. They, in one form or another, promote Chinese values, leaving no room for someone else’s propaganda.

Everything is going according to plan

The same "Battle of Chosin Reservoir" tells about the heroic resistance of Chinese people's volunteers to the UN troops (that is, the United States, Great Britain and Canada). "How is it possible! - laments Variety. "After all, according to Western historians, the Chinese lost that battle in 1950!" So the Russian Wikipedia page sings hosanna to "one of the most glorious pages in the history of the US Marine Corps”.

However, Beijing made its own version of that story — and in three months it was imprinted on the minds of hundreds of millions of people. And this is just the beginning: as Chinese experts urge in the loud hailer of the CCP, the Global Times newspaper, against the background of strategic rivalry between China and the United States, it is necessary to make even more films about resisting the military onslaught of the Americans.

But it's not just about fighting on the battlefield. On the last day of last year, a local film was released in China "Embrace Again". Today, it occupies the top of the box office, having already earned $146 million. The film focuses on the love stories of ordinary Wuhan residents amid COVID-19.

"Another recent film, ‘Embrace Again,’ uses China's most popular movie stars to amplify Beijing's preferred narrative of the pandemic," protests the American publication Axios. “ As a heartwarming struggle of a people against a virus — while erasing the government failures that allowed the initial outbreak to become a pandemic. The film dominated the New Year's box office.”

Strange claims. One might think filmmakers in the United States do things differently. It was precisely they who set the tone for the historical hoaxes of recent decades, telling how they won wars everywhere in the world, brought freedom and democracy to enslaved nations, punished villains, overcame pandemics and, of course, saved the world from any catastrophes and invasions. Why can't the Chinese do it?

Now the time of American cinema is coming to an end. Even now, China is successfully competing with Hollywood products in its own market and creating a new reality for hundreds of millions of people. And soon the cultural expansion of the Middle Kingdom to other countries will inevitably follow - so that the rest of the planet can learn the world according to Beijing's patterns. The competition will remain only Bollywood, which successfully spreads the Indian view of the world everywhere, including in America.

Everything is going according to plan in Beijing. More precisely, according to the "14th five-year plan for the development of Chinese films" for 2021-2025, which considers cinema as a real industry that requires investment, personnel, and technology. The ambitious goal has already been announced - to become the locomotive of world cinema by 2035 and delight humanity with "beautiful masterpieces that demonstrate the Chinese spirit, Chinese values, Chinese power and Chinese aesthetics”.

And no superheroes can prevent the Celestial Empire from doing this - neither a gay demigod, nor KGB ballerina Natasha Alianovna.